Binary Compatible Operating Systems
Binary compatible operating systems are operating systems who aim to implement binary compatibility with another operating system. For example, the ReactOS operating system development effort seeks to create an open source, free software operating system that is binary compatible with Microsoft's Windows NT family of operating systems. FreeBSD and other members of the BSD family have binary compatibility with the Linux kernel in usermode by translating Linux system calls into BSD ones. This enables the libraries and application code that run on Linux-based operating systems to be run on BSD as well.
Note that a binary compatible operating system is different from an operating system that provides a means of virtualization to enable other software to run. For example, Mac OS X on the PowerPC had the ability to run MacOS 9 and earlier application software through Classic—but this did not make OS X a binary compatible operating system with MacOS 9. Instead, the Classic environment was actually running MacOS 9 in a virtual machine, running as a normal process inside of the OS X operating system. Windows 7 has Windows XP Mode which serves a similar purpose, allowing users to run a 64-bit version of Windows 7 and have very old software still work in a 32-bit virtual machine running Windows XP.
Read more about this topic: Binary Code Compatibility
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